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Examples
of UKCIA being censored
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During
2003 and 2004 UKCIA became aware of several incidents of censorship
by public institutions; namely libraries and the BBC. The reason
given in all the cases was "filtering to ensure websites are
family friendly", however, no explanation of what this means
as far as we are concerned was ever given.
Some
libraries use filtering which simply blocks "drugs" websites,
although or course this never includes Talk to Frank or websites
approved or run by the government.
UKCIA
is easy to contact and we would
always respond to any reasonable concerns regarding content unsuitable
for children or any other serious concern, but no such approach
to us has ever been made.
We
have no idea when this censorship happened, we only learned about
it in the case of libraries by being told by people who tried to
view UKCIA and found it blocked. It was when we did a campaign which
wasn't found by the BBC search engine, but was prominent on all
the other search engines, that we noticed what the BBC was up to.
It's
almost certain UKCIA was blocked to large sections of the British
public during the time of reclassification in January 2004. As the
website of the legalise cannabis campaigns, UKCIA is integral to
the debate regarding cannabis in the UK. What is happening can only
be regarded as censorship.
September
2004 - Censored by the BBC
Since
August, UKCIA had been running a feature about a leaflet called
"Hayzy
Dayz", issued by the government's Talk to Frank campaign.
Throughout August and into September, this item had featured at
or near the first hit on all the search engines if you did a search
for "hayzy dayz". However, it didn't feature at all on
the BBC
search engine.
It
wasn't easy to contact the BBC about this, a search of the website
failed to turn up a phone number or even an e-mail address. A call
to the local BBC studios in Norwich was the start of a couple of
near fruitless hours on the phone, calling numbers in London. The
BBC switchboard had no idea where to send us. Eventually someone
took a message and to our surprise, the BBC did phone back.
This
resulted in a letter from the BBCi Editorial and Information Team,
which you can read here
- a private address is blacked out on the scan of the letter. It's
quite an astounding reply to a serious complaint, not least because
the letter confirmed UKCIA had been deliberately blocked by a decision
taken within the BBC rather than by the use of third party software.
This
gave us a ref number - 10398637 and a call to the number given gave
an e-mail address.
Our
reply was sent by both e-mail and by snail mail (read
here), the response was as near to immediate as possible, and
we were unblocked. - BBC reply - read
here. Note there is no apology, much less an explanation.
As
of September 2004, now we're unblocked, UKCIA is the number one
search result on the BBC search engine out of 455,278 search results
for "cannabis". It is shown behind the Talk to Frank government
website's page on cannabis as the BBC has chosen to "recommend"
it, along with a House of Lords report and a New Scientist article.
UKCIA was the number one genuine result. It's difficult to draw
any other conclusion from this other than the BBC deliberately censored
us from its search engine, the other 455,-odd thousand sites were
all there.
We
have been informed that as of September 2004, some libraries are
still censoring UKCIA from their public access terminals.
November
2003 - censored by libraries
Some libraries in the eastern counties of the UK were found to be
blocking access to UKCIA by means of webfiltering. This seems to
have come about because a closed group of local government officers
at county council level have assumed the right to decide what subject
areas can be allowed on their library computers to which the pubic
have access. The basis for the decision seems to be that drugs are
illegal, therefore sites discussing illegal drugs are also in some
way illegal. "Protection of children", as usual, was used
to justify this censorship.
The
authorities we've dealt with, Essex and Northampton agreed that
UKCIA is a legitimate campaign site. Northampton were able to unblock
us themselves and apparently did so, but Essex was not able to unblock
us. UKCIA approached the webfiltering company and managed to get
them to remove us from their list of banned websites.
We
are tried to establish the extent of this web censoring and who
has the authority to decide which subjects should be censored, but
we didn't get very far. This authority seems to have been assumed
by local government officers and no method of accountability seems
to have been provided. We are also trying to find how to appeal,
but there doesn't seem to be a way. True, unaccountable censorship.
How
you can help
Please
go into your local library and try to look at the ukcia website.
If you can't see it due to webfiltering, please e-contact
us.
Drugs
may be illegal, talking about them isn't
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Confirmation
of change of category from SmartFilter 15th November 2003
E-mail
sent to Information Services Manager at Essex County Council 16th
November 2003
Reply
from Information Services manager 20th November 2003
E-mail
from UKCIA to department of Culture, Media and Sport 23/11/2003
E-mail
to Information Services Manager at Essex following failure to re-gategorise
by SmartFilter 23/11/2003
The
original item from UKCIA November 2003
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Essex
County Council just says No
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During
the week of 11th November it was drawn to our attention that
UKCIA was blocked from computers in libraries run by Essex County
Council. |
This
was happening because the council has taken the decision to ban
access to websites which carry information about the use and sale
of illegal drugs, even though such sites are not illegal in this
country. Indeed, any site which supports harm reduction will carry
that sort of information. This decision was taken by a sub committee
of the strangely named "Peoples network project board"
and seemingly never challenged or checked. If that policy were properly
enforced, the governments "Talk to Frank" site would be
banned.
It
should be noted that this ban only applies to libraries in Essex
and not schools, so whilst Essex children are permitted to see drugs
information sites, adults aren't.
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The
site was being blocked because the council had decided to use
a filter provided by the Smartfilter
censorware, provided by the American company Secure
Computing which can ban sites which " provide information
on the purchase, manufacturing, and use of illegal or recreational
drugs", cannabis sites are mentioned specifically. |
Fortunately,
following an e-mail from UKCIA Smartfilter have realised their mistake
and will move UKCIA from the "Drugs, politics/religion"
category to "'politics/religion/opinion" and so UKCIA
will again be available in Essex when the change takes effect.
But
UKCIA isn't the only site being censored by Essex CC. At the time
of writing the LCA
is blocked as is the Dutch language version of Drugtext,
although not the English
version. Most of the smaller sites aren't blocked because they're
not listed on Smartfilter's database.
UKCIA
will try to establish on what grounds Essex decided to censor access
to sites such as UKCIA and what parameters they have set for doing
so. We'll also try to find which sites are censored, although there's
no way they can have a clue about that.
UKCIA
will be available in Essex libraries again from November 18th
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